I know someone who has a young child who is very likely to die in the near future. This person has (most likely) never heard of cryonics. My model of this person is very unlikely to decide to preserve their child even if they knew about it.
I don’t know if I should say something. At first I was thinking that I should because the social ramifications are negligible. After thinking about it for a while, I changed my mind and decided that possibly I was just trying to absolve myself of guilt at the cost of offending a grieving parent. I am not sure if this is just rationalization.
You should reconsider this assumption. I would imagine that making suggestions about what to do with someone’s soon-to-be-dead child’s body would be looked upon coldly at best and with active hostility at worst. It’s like if you suggested you knew a really good mortician; it’s just not the sort of thing you’re supposed to be saying.
There’s also the fact that, as a society, we are very keen when watching the bereaved for signs they haven’t accepted the death. To most people cryonics looks like a sort of pseudoscientific mummification and the idea that such a person could be revived as delusional. It is easy to imagine that if your friend shelled out hundreds of thousands on your say-so for such a project people might see you as preying on a mentally vulnerable person.
This is not to make a value judgement or a suggestion, just pointing out that the social consequences are quite possibly non-negligible.
If you have not signed up for cryonics yourself, you could ask this person for advice as to whether you should. If you have signed up, you could work this into a conversation. Or just find some video or article likely to influence the parent and forward it to him, perhaps an article mentioning Kim Suozzi.
I know someone who has a young child who is very likely to die in the near future. This person has (most likely) never heard of cryonics. My model of this person is very unlikely to decide to preserve their child even if they knew about it.
I don’t know if I should say something. At first I was thinking that I should because the social ramifications are negligible. After thinking about it for a while, I changed my mind and decided that possibly I was just trying to absolve myself of guilt at the cost of offending a grieving parent. I am not sure if this is just rationalization.
Advice?
Does the person has the financial means to pay for out of the pocket cryonics? It probably won’t be possible to get life insurance for the child.
I am not sure. I think so.
Attempting to highlight relevant variables:
how likely your persuasion is to offend parents (which is a pdf, not binary, of course)
how much you care whether you offend parents (see previous parenthetical)
U(child lives a long time) - U(child dies as expected)
P(child lives a long time | child gets frozen)
P(child gets frozen | you try to persuade the parents)
Edited to fix formatting.
You should reconsider this assumption. I would imagine that making suggestions about what to do with someone’s soon-to-be-dead child’s body would be looked upon coldly at best and with active hostility at worst. It’s like if you suggested you knew a really good mortician; it’s just not the sort of thing you’re supposed to be saying.
There’s also the fact that, as a society, we are very keen when watching the bereaved for signs they haven’t accepted the death. To most people cryonics looks like a sort of pseudoscientific mummification and the idea that such a person could be revived as delusional. It is easy to imagine that if your friend shelled out hundreds of thousands on your say-so for such a project people might see you as preying on a mentally vulnerable person.
This is not to make a value judgement or a suggestion, just pointing out that the social consequences are quite possibly non-negligible.
If you have not signed up for cryonics yourself, you could ask this person for advice as to whether you should. If you have signed up, you could work this into a conversation. Or just find some video or article likely to influence the parent and forward it to him, perhaps an article mentioning Kim Suozzi.
The only plausible ways I can think to bring it up are:
1) Directly
2) Talk about it to someone else with him in the room
3) Convince someone else who very close to him but not directly dealing with the loss of their child to consider it, and possibly bring it up for me
I think if I were to bring it up, I would take the third path.